so ive had this thing for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent a lot of time reading posts like this before buying. came from an old TS-590SG which i actually really liked but the 7300 was just hard to ignore at that price point, especially with the built in waterfall and the SDR front end and all that.

first thing — the touchscreen is way more useful than i expected. i was kind of skeptical because i figured id just ignore it but honestly i use it constantly to click around on signals when im just casually spinning the dial. the spectrum scope is responsive enough that it doesnt feel like an afterthought like some older implementations ive used.

receiver feels solid to me. granted im not in a super RF-dense urban environment so i cant speak to strong signal handling in a busy contest situation, but on 40m at night its just... clean. quieter than i expected for a radio in this class. havent really stress tested the roofing filters or anything, just normal operating.

one thing that did bug me — the mic audio out of the box was a little thin sounding on SSB. had to mess with the TX equalizer settings for a bit before i was happy with it. not a dealbreaker but it took longer than it should have to dial in, the menu isnt exactly intuitive for that stuff.

anyway if anyones on the fence about one of these im happy to answer questions. not trying to be a fanboy, it has quirks, but overall im pretty happy with where it sits in the shack.

the TX EQ thing is real, i went through the same thing when i got mine. what ended up working for me was rolling off a little of the low mids around 300hz and boosting slightly around 2.5k, made it sound a lot more natural on the other end. had a buddy on 20m tell me it sounded processed before i made that adjustment which was kind of embarrassing lol.

also if you havent already, look at the AGC settings. the defaults are a bit aggressive for my taste on SSB, particularly on fast moving signals. i run it a little slower now and it smoothed things out quite a bit. the radio has a lot more adjustability buried in those menus than people give it credit for, just takes a while to find it all.

good to hear, ive been looking at these for a while but keep hesitating because honestly my FT-891 does everything i actually need it to do for portable and i keep telling myself i dont need a base rig right now. but then i see the waterfall and i start convincing myself otherwise. how does it handle on 10m when the band is actually open? thats where i feel like i really want something with a better front end than what ive got.